Tea leaves in the sky

I had a great aunt who could tell fortunes with tea leaves; my mother took me to see her sometimes on trips to stay with another great aunt, the one who lived alone in her own house till she was over 100 and then went on a year or two more in a retirement home.

This is only a small digression because I so often will smell something that takes me right back into the long-lived aunt's kitchen, bright and warm on a dark cool night, with bread toasting - the only food a very small Mary would eat in a strange place. (the tea-leaf-reading aunt, on the other hand, offered chocolates, which a very small and chocolate-obsessed Mary was too shy to take. Fat chance of that happening now!)

Last night I had a different memory trigger - a darkening sky lit by bright turning leaves. It reminded me of the light in the sky after a storm near the house I grew up in, but the leaves reminded me of those long-ago fortunes. I wonder if you can tell a fortune with any of these?




This one, on the other hand: it's an inkblot, or a passing collection of clouds.


I see:

an anteater
a teddy bear head
a big ol' branch about to drop on the lawn.